


Debris

by Imagined



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, M/M, Odin's A+ Parenting, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Loki/Tony Stark, Tony Stark Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-08 00:46:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12853083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagined/pseuds/Imagined
Summary: Set during The Avengers. Tony is broken, but slowly picking up the pieces to rebuild himself. Loki is breaking and has no one left. Both have to make one choice: give up – or go on in a society that doesn’t understand the men they are.





	Debris

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, hi. I'm new here. I'm that person who has been reading fanfics for like 6 years now and you have never heard anything from. The main reason I'm posting this is because it's the best thing I could find on a short notice, so I could figure out how this site actually works. I wrote this about 3 years ago, when I was 16, and I'm not a native speaker, so if you find a mistake, please tell me so I can correct it and don't be harsh (I'll just go back to never actually posting anything ever again because I'm insecure like that). Okay, so about the story: it's set during The Avengers, but it's not chronological. I mean, I guess that it's an AU because in my head, Tony goes to talk to Loki on the Helicarrier, but I didn't write any specifics about where any conversations take place. Well, I hope you enjoy and please don't hurt me.

‘’Sometimes, my lies are lies,’’ Loki says, ‘’And sometimes, my lies are truth. Most of the times it does not matter. There is no one to tell me which one it is.’’

‘’You have to know the truth before you can lie,’’ Tony says, a frown on his face.

Loki smiles, but it seems like the opposite. His face is solemn, his eyes withdrawn. Tony knows the look in his face – he’s seen it in the mirror, sometimes. He recognizes the look a man has when he is killing himself with knowledge.

‘’That is not true,’’ Loki answers, ‘’But ignorance is bliss.’’ Tony agrees.

~*~

He is a changed man, Tony sees.

He’s the Liesmith. He’s the Silvertongue. He’s a Norse god that has lived hundreds of years and probably will continue to do so. He’s a man to whom Tony will only be a short-lived memory, and that has never been good for his ego. He fools himself into thinking that’s the reason of his visit to Loki, instead of the eyes that turned empty as soon as they won.

He is a changed man, Tony knows, because he does not just see the man trying to destroy a city.

He sees a man trying to flee from what has happened – simply in a different way than Tony, but maybe it was not all that different. Tony does not care about the differences, not really. 

He is no Liesmith and he cannot fool himself into saying Loki does not intrigue him, because he does. 

~*~

‘’I am a father,’’ Loki says, in a soft voice that speaks of parental pride. Maybe he says it because Tony has told him about the robots he made, the only ones acknowledging him when he was younger. More foolish, more brave. Still innocent, though most would not call him that.

No blood on his hands back then, at least. Tony still sees it, if he watches his hands carefully.

Tony sits up a bit straighter, a sign of interest. ‘’What’re they like?’’ he asks. Loki tells him.

~*~

People think he had everything. Has everything. They think him spoilt – the rich playboy, getting everything from his dearest dad.

He knows now, he knows he was a boy craving love and finding it in lust. He knows as well that he is smarter than his father ever was and that his company has never done as well as it does now.

People think too much, but they know nothing. Loki seemed to have everything – the clever prince, the youngest without too much expectations weighing him down – and look what happened.

Look how they broke him, the man their children call monster.

Pepper saved him, he believes. It doesn’t seem like it, but things could have gone so much worse without her. He has always been too rebellious to listen completely – ‘’If you tell me not to, you only give me more reason to actually do it, Pep,’’ – but she took off the worst. She was there to care for him when things went south. He’s grateful, but ‘surviving’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘living’ he knows now, as well.

Thor, for all his good intentions, is too late, is another thing Tony knows. He sees it reflected in Loki – the hurt he masks as anger. Loki still loves Thor, but it’s too late for Thor to save Loki. The men closest to the sun will never stop casting a shadow, after all. Thor does not understand, but Tony does. He knows what it’s like, in the end, and that’s a thing Loki knows as well, he suspects.

Loki is hurt, Loki is angry, but he still loves. Perhaps indifference is worse than anger. Anger means you care. ‘’I must care a lot, then,’’ Loki says when Tony tells him this, but Tony sees through the lie and calls him on it.

Loki is grateful, as well, secretly but he knows, and Tony thinks it ironic he’s Loki’s Pepper.

~*~

There’s glass dividing them. Freedom – Restriction. Tony goes in, sometimes, and they’ll be restricted together. It feels surprisingly freeing to be confined with someone else.

~*~

‘’What are you doing?’’ Natasha asks, this one time. Tony looks up from a book he borrowed from Bruce and smiles bitterly. He knows what she’s talking about. It seems like his new teammates can’t talk about anything else than their captive, to whom he’s growing too close. It makes them uncomfortable.

Tony has never particularly cared for such things, and he’s not about to start now. But Natasha might understand, though he does not really like her. She’s lied to him too often for him to do that. Tony likes to be told lies, because most of the time it’s better than the truth, but he wants to know they’re lies beforehand. Makes it all that much easier.

‘’He’s breaking,’’ he tells her, ‘’And there’s no one who understands it.’’ Later, he’s not sure whether he spoke of Loki or of himself.

Loki says he spoke for both of them and Tony is inclined to believe it.

~*~

The man is a bloodied mess on the ground. Tony looks down at him, at his ruined floor, a man whose eyes grow empty and whose laugh is fake and a man who knew it would end like this.

A man who wanted the world as broken as himself and Tony cannot really blame him, except that the world’s broken enough as it is.

He gives the man a drink before SHIELD picks him up. Even then, Loki looks at Tony, wrists bound for any eventual attack, but Tony’s not afraid of him. He sees the man he once was.

‘’They won’t understand,’’ Loki says.

Tony shakes his head. ‘’No one understands until they’ve given up themselves.’’

‘’I have not given up,’’ Loki grits through his teeth.

Tony feels his mouth twitch. ‘’Weren’t you the God of Lies?’’

~*~

Loki hates his father, because he made Loki’s life a lie. Because he was the man that made the choice Loki should’ve been able to make. Before that, he hated him because he was constantly in Thor’s shadows.

Tony hates his father, because how do you compete with someone who had died before you were even born?

Maybe both don’t hate their father. After all, how can you hate someone who was never really there? How can you hate someone who does not even bother returning the sentiment?

It only makes them hate their fathers more.

~*~

Loki cries, only once. No sobs, no shaking shoulders, just clear tears dropping out of his eyes. Tony asks him why, afraid he’s really broken apart now. Picking up pieces is hard, he knows. You’ve lost so much it’s hard to know with what you have to pick up the pieces lying in front of you.

‘’I do not want to die anymore,’’ Loki says.

People unbroken would have rejoiced. Not Tony Stark, of course. 

He grimaces. ‘’Staying alive is harder, you know,’’ he admits, ‘’But it’ll be worth it. That’s the thing about living – you’ve got the time to find things worthy of it.’’

Loki laughs, mirthless but promising. It’s enough of an answer for Tony.

~*~

New York is broken. Tony shows Loki and Loki is silent for a while.

‘’The debris is going to take a fucking long while to clean, you know,’’ Tony says. Loki smiles grimly, not necessarily sorry for what he’s done but knowing better now. Tony knows he will never admit that, too, like he did. They’re both too stubborn, he thinks.

‘’You should rebuild it to be better,’’ Loki answers, ‘’Less prone to… breaking.’’

Tony understands what he means, because they weren’t really talking about New York in the first place. They’re broken men in a society that wants to see them as whole people – and humans only see what they want to see, so they will never get it. Tony accepted that a long time ago.

He glances at Loki, pale and thin and broken. He puts away the pictures – SHIELD never would have let him out of his cell, never would believe anything they said, because Tony is compromised – and walks into the cell again. Loki knows the password by now, but he’s never tried to get out. There would be nowhere to go, after all.

‘’Not everything can be rebuild,’’ he says, ‘’And it’ll never be like it was. But debris shouldn’t scare us off, not after all that’s happened. Things can be better. It can be a new start.’’

‘’Asgard is full of men older than your civilization. They are not fond of changes. I have been what I am too long – I do not want to change.’’

‘’Not from the outside,’’ Tony challenges, and puts a hand over Loki’s heart. Loki lets him, though he is still stronger than one mortal man.

Loki smiles, briefly. ‘’Asgard has never seen debris, apart from a few times at war.’’

‘’Escape,’’ Tony tells him, face dead serious, ‘’And I’ll fucking let you know how to clean up the damned debris because we’re in no way lesser than a bunch of fucking know-it-alls who live in the past.’’

Thor takes away Loki the next day.

Two months later, he appears at Tony’s house again.


End file.
